Please provide an explicit Subject Line when emailing a nomination, e.g. Nomination for SISO Meritorious Service Award, Letter of Appreciation for work on XXX Group/Panel

SISO awards and recognitions include:

Bill Waite Outstanding Contribution to M&S Award. This award recognizes extraordinary contribution to the international M&S community. There may be more than one of these awards presented in one SISO year.

SISO Technical Merit Award (TMA). This award recognizes technical excellence in the development of standards. Only SISO members are eligible for nomination. This can also be given as a team award.

SISO Meritorious Service Award (MSA). This award recognizes outstanding service and achievements in the management and support of SISO.

SIWzie Recognition. A SIWzie recognizes SISO published papers for the recommended reading list of a Simulation Interoperable Workshop (SIW).

SISO OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO M&S AWARDS

2013

Dr. Duncan Miller

SISO is honored to present its first Outstanding Contribution to Modeling and Simulation award to Dr. Duncan C. Miller. For over 30 years, Dr. Miller has been a leader in the modeling and simulation community, contributing at every step of the way to the development of distributed simulation, its standards, and the management of the organizations that have and continue to pioneer this technology. Dr. Miller, then working for Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc (BBN), formed the team and managed the ARPA/DARPA program that developed the protocols and software for SIMNET. The pioneering work of this team is the foundation of distributed simulation. Later, as leader of the MIT Lincoln Laboratories’ Distributed Systems Group, Dr. Miller was part of a government/industry team that developed the High Level Architecture for Modeling and Simulation and helped develop the first operational implementation of the HLA Run-Time Infrastructure software and application of this software to DARPA’s Synthetic Theater of War (STOW). Dr Miller was a founding member of SISO and the DIS Workshops that preceded this organization. He has served on the DIS Standards Steering Committee, the DIS Transition Team, the SISO Board of Directors, as chair of the SISO Conference Committee, and as Executive Director of SISO. His achievements demonstrate the impact he has had on the modeling and simulation community, both as a technical leader and a manager in multiple roles.

SISO TECHNICAL MERIT AWARDS

2015

Aaron Dubois

Mr. Aaron Dubois was the editor for SISO-STD-001-2015, the Standard for Guidance, Rationale, and Interoperability Modalities for the Real-time Platform Reference Federation Object Model, Version 2.0. Mr. Dubois has played a key role as editor and has also contributed to SIW papers about the revised standard. Mr. Dubois has networked with current and previous members of SISO groups, building on the heritage and body of knowledge of SISO as well as capturing new ideas for further improvement. Mr. Dubois’ contributions include reviewing, updating, modernizing, and resolving errors in the RPR FOM standard, ensuring it will continue to be a crucial component for national and international interoperability between defense simulations.

2015

Patrice Le Leydour

Mr. Patrice Le Leydour was the editor for SISO-STD-001.1-2015, the Standard for Real-time Platform Reference Federation Object Model, Version 2.0. Mr. Le Leydour has played a key role as editor and has also contributed to SIW papers about the revised standard. Mr. Le Leydour has networked with current and previous members of SISO groups, building on the heritage and body of knowledge of SISO as well as capturing new ideas for further improvement. Mr. Le Leydour’s contributions include reviewing, updating, modernizing, and resolving errors in the RPR FOM standard, ensuring it will continue to be a crucial component for national and international interoperability between defense simulations.

2015

René Verhage

Mr. René Verhage was the editor for SISO-STD-001.1-2015, the Standard for the Real-time Platform Reference Federation Object Model, Version 2.0. Mr. Verhage has played a key role as editor and has also contributed to SIW papers about the revised standard. Mr. Verhage has networked with current and previous members of SISO groups, building on the heritage and body of knowledge of SISO as well as capturing new ideas for further improvement. Mr. Verhage’s contributions include reviewing, updating, modernizing, and resolving errors in the RPR FOM standard, ensuring it will continue to be a crucial component for national and international interoperability between defense simulations.

2014

Lance Morrou

SISO-REF-010 contains over 20,000 enumerations and is critical for interoperability of a large range of simulations across the Distributed Interactive Simulation, High Level Architecture, and Test and Training Enabling Architecture spectrum. Mr. Marrou accepted the challenge of establishing the Enumerations Working Group to manage the revision and publication process. He developed the rules for processing the hundreds of change requests that go into each release and the rules to resolve the previously inconsistent categorization of entity types and other enumerations. Mr. Marrou continues to chair the Enumerations Working Group and leads the technical discussions associated with processing change requests and publishing

2014

Graham Shanks

Mr. Shanks developed the software tools that are critical to converting this complex SISO product from a manually processed document into a set of XML-based files that are both human readable and machine readable for automated processing by users. Mr. Shanks’ tools span the entire chain of process from the submitted change requests, error and conflict checks, XML database updates, status tracking, and auto-generating Word, PDF, and HTML files for publication. Mr. Shanks has worked to release the tools as open source software so that future generations of SISO members have the means to continue revision and publication of this important simulation resource.

2011

Björn Möller

For substantial contributions to development of the HLA Standard, in particular the HLA Evolved. Mr. Möller’s contributions range from new conceptual ideas like modular FOMs and principles for ‘Update rate reduction’ to providing extensive engineering support and design of the Web Services API. Also, he shared his visions and ideas with enthusiasm and indefatigable support for SISO activities to advance understanding and use of simulation interoperability. The majority of his papers have been presented at Simulation Interoperability Workshops and many were awarded SIWzies.

2011

Mikael Karlsson

For substantial contributions to development of the HLA Standard, in particular the HLA Evolved. Mr. Karlsson’s contributions range from new conceptual ideas like modular FOMs and principles for ‘Update rate reduction’ to providing extensive engineering support and design of the Web Services API. Also, he shared his visions and ideas with enthusiasm and indefatigable support for SISO activities to advance understanding and use of simulation interoperability. The majority of his papers have been presented at Simulation Interoperability Workshops and many were awarded SIWzies.

2010

Andreas Tolk

SISO is proud to make its first Technical Merit Award to Dr. Andreas Tolk, who has for 10 years been at the forefront of modeling and simulation scientific thought and practice in such diverse areas as human crowd modeling, a theory of conceptual modeling, simulation architectures and levels of interoperability. His technical contributions to Modeling and Simulation have resulted in eight Best Paper Awards and 21 SIWzie Awards from SISO; Best Paper recognition from SCS; and four unsolicited nominations for this award.

SISO MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARDS

2018

Paul Gustavson

Mr. Gustavson has been a leader within SISO since the establishment of the organization. He chaired the Base Object Model (BOM) PDG, leading to one of the very first SISO standards. He has been an active supporter of other SISO standards activities, such as FEDEP, DSEEP, DMAO, and SRML, serving as a Drafting Group (DG) member in several cases. Paul has been a prolific author at SISO with numerous conference presentations and several “Best Paper” awards. He has served on the SAC and EXCOM. In 2013, he volunteered to fill a vacancy as the Chair of the CC and continued to serve in this position through 2016 and as Vice Chair in 2017. In the Fall of 2017, he volunteered to fill a vacancy in the CC Chair position and simultaneously fulfills the duties of the vacant CC Vice Chair position. Mr. Gustavson’s leadership, energy, and volunteer spirit has resulted in numerous improvements to the conference planning process and the Simulation Innovation Workshops.

2016

Jean-Louis Igarza

The Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Standards Activity Committee (SAC) recognizes Mr. Jean-Louis Igarza for his dedication to organizing and conducting one-day SISO M&S Seminars at the annual International Training and Education Conference (ITEC) in Europe. ITEC is the key European military training and simulation event that allows industry, military, and academia to collaborate on training and simulation and to learn about M&S Standards developed by SISO members for use by the worldwide M&S community.

Since 2012 and while volunteering to serve on one of the three SISO Committees, Mr. Igarza facilitated the SISO presence in Europe. Today SISO has over 360 members from 18 countries from around the world. Due to his dedication and persistence, information about SISO and SISO M&S Standards is available to the thousands of individuals who participate in ITEC each year. In addition to planning and organizing the one-day seminar, Mr. Igarza also plans for and facilitates meetings for SISO groups involved in the development and support of SISO M&S Standards.

There are many moving parts involved in coordinating amongst multiple organizations to plan for and conduct each seminar and facilitate ad hoc SISO group meetings. In addition to SISO and ITEC, other organizations involved in the coordination include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Modelling and Simulation Group (NMSG), European Training and Simulation Association (ETSA), National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA), and Clarion Events. In 2014, Mr. Igarza facilitated a Memorandum of Agreement by and between SISO and ETSA to jointly promote training and M&S opportunities worldwide.

Jean-Louis Igarza is a valuable member of the international SISO community and is unreplaceable as a SISO volunteer. Without his dedication to SISO, there would be no SISO presence in Europe today.

2015

Marcy Stutzman

Ms. Stutzman has been a member and officer of the Standards Activity Committee for four years and in that time has worked tirelessly to establish SAC templates and procedures that expedite the product development process for SISO Groups. She took on the reorganization of the digital library, ensured all published products were posted in the appropriate folders, and when necessary worked with the past chairs to find published products that had not properly posted for community access. Further, she has served as SAC Editor in making final quality edits to SISO products as well as providing advice to SISO groups and SAC members alike. Ms. Stutzman has worked to ensure all SISO committees consider all sides of every decision. Her efforts have helped transform the SAC into an adaptive and effective committee.

2014

Dr. James E. Coolahan

Dr. Coolahan has been a member and leader of SISO for over fourteen years, serving in multiple leadership roles including the Systems Lifecycle Forum PRP, the Management of M&S Assets PRP, the Conference Committee, the Executive Committee and the SISO Inc. Board of Directors. Dr. Coolahan has authored numerous papers and has been awarded multiple SISO SIWzie awards. Dr. Coolahan was one of the organizers of the Live, Virtual, and Constructive Architecture Roadmap special event and was a key contributor to the most recent revision of the SISO Strategic Plan. Dr. Coolahan’s parallel activities in the National Defense Industrial Association, the National Training and Simulation Association, and the National Modeling and Simulation Coalition continue to contribute to the Modeling and Simulation Community at large and to SISO’s role in the community.

2012

Dr. Louis Hembree

Dr. Louis Hembree has been a very active participant in SISO and DIS workshops since the 1980’s. He was a key developer and proponent of the Master Environmental Library (MEL). Dr. Hembree served as the first official chair of the Environmental Data Representation Standards (EDRS) Product Support Group (PSG). Dr. Hembree’s work was key in developing the SISO link to ISO/IEC SC24 and supporting ANSI INCITS H3.

2011

Priscilla R. Elfrey

The award is for Priscilla’s ongoing contributions to expand the SISO community of interest beyond DoD and promoting wider use of SISO Standards.

An active member of SISO for more than a decade, among Priscilla’s numerous contributions, she has: initiated and chaired the Space Community Forum; held leadership positions in Message Passing and Game Technology Study Groups; served as SISO liaison with NASA management since 2002; and served as Joint Plenary Speaker for Euro SIW, Santa Margherita, Italy 2007, Edinburgh, Scotland 2008, and Ottawa, 2010. Most significant of her achievements is her dedication to providing youth the opportunity to become M&S professionals. Priscilla has been the driving force behind Smackdown 2011 and 2012, this year expanding the scope to include 34 tribal colleges through the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.

2011

James (Mark) McCall

This award is for Mark's lifetime contribution to SISO Standards. Mark has served SISO since its inception in many capacities, including: Individual contributor to the DIS, HLA, FEDEP, and DSEEP standards; Member and Chair of the SAC; Member and Vice Chair of the EXCOM; Chair of the BOD; Member and Chair of the DIS PDG. He has tirelessly given of himself for over 15 years to further the cause of Simulation Standards and SISO.

2010

Ms. Peggy Gravitz

For more than ten years, Peggy Gravitz has provided Meritorious Service to SISO and the standards development process. While serving as an elected and appointed member of the SAC, Peggy was the lead author for the BPDSP version 7.1. She served as lead author for the SISO Product templates. Peggy leads the SISO Quality checklist development. As TAD, Ms. Gravitz was instrumental in the success of the CMSD and EDRS product developments.

2010

Dr. Jean-Louis Igarza

SISO is pleased to award Dr. Jean-Louis Igarza for Meritorious Service for his contributions to the international M&S Community for more than 20 years. Jean-Louis’ work as the chair of NATO MSG in alignment with his activities in SISO's EXCOM laid the foundation not only for fruitful collaborations, but also for the acceptance of SISO as a standardization body for NATO's M&S efforts, which increased the importance of SISO activities significantly. Dr. Igarza’s service shaped SISO and the future of M&S standards.

SISO LETTER OF APPRECIATION

Nominations may be submitted by any SISO member for a Letter of Appreciation which, after review, is sent to the manager(s) of the SISO member being recognized. Nominations are submitted to the Executive Director, who is normally the one who signs the letters, though they may be signed by any of the SISO Committee Chairs, as appropriate for the contributions being recognized.

SIWZIE AWARDS

After each Simulation Innovation Workshop, the Forum Chairs nominate papers and presentations that they believe to be the most significant presented at this SIW. The Conference Committee members review these papers, rank them, and the CC awards SIWzie certificates to those on which the reviewers agree. These papers are listed (in ranked order) on the summary page for each past SIW. Below is a link to the most recent SIW conferences.